The Risk of Being A Rahul Gandhi

What a start to this brand new week! Who would have thought Rahul Gandhi was going to get into the headlines for a wrong reason? God knows what’s wrong with our country. 2012 has so far brought nothing but the bad news. First Virat Kohli showed his middle finger to the Aussie crowd. Then came the news of the assault with blank ink on Baba Ramdev’s face. This was followed by the news of Salman Rushdie’s withdrawal from the on-going JLF. As if all this trauma and heart burns weren’t enough, now comes the news of a shoe hurled at Rahul Baba in Vikasnagar.

The shoe missed its mark. It fell short of its target by a good ten meters. But this incident clearly suggests that all is clearly not well in this country. People are losing hopes and they are resorting to acts of soft violence such as a pat on the chubby cheeks, the spray of black ink on the face that we’ve been seeing on our TV screens for as long as we can remember and a shoe hurling (that misses its mark) at someone who is the likely PM of our country.

Why is there so much of dissent and intolerance in the air? Everybody is out there to grab fifteen minutes of his fame by indulging in the most comic form of dissent. Who isn’t aware of the tight security Rahul Baba has around him? How did Kuldip imagine his shoe was going to hit the Gandhi heir apparent pentrating that complex security web? Sharad Pawar’s attacker was mentally unstable. What about Kuldip? Was he under the influence of any substance that gave him the courage to hurl a shoe at Rahul Baba?

The way high profile people come under attack from common men is so unconvincing that it evokes laughter and conspiracy theories in equal measures. Nobody knows from where those attackers come from, on what grounds they choose their victims and what happens to them once the police takes them in custody after they receive good thrashing from the supporters of their victims. When the dust settles down, the unknown faces of the attackers forever disappear without a trace. Are there no news channels who would like to interview them?

Yesterday somebody tried to do something outrageous at a rally where the Team Anna was present. The mischief monger didn’t succeed there. Today Rahul Gandhi became the victim of a shoe hurling. At this rate political leaders will choose to address rallies via skype. But the politicians don’t like to be seen as beaten by the common men, they might as well enact a law banning footwears. When this happens, it will be the height of absurdity.

But then again we are a truly vibrant democracy where everybody is treated equally. Shoe hurler will not escape the law of the land, especially when the victim is as high profile as Rahul Baba. Long live such hilarious forms of dissent that allow politicians to grab headlines, cameras to focus on hitherto unknown faces and provide us, the stakeholders in democracy, with much needed comic relief.